Taliban Awards Iron, Lead Mining Sites To Afghan, Iranian, Turkish & British Companies

TTP issued the statement in response to a tribal jirga organised by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party in Peshawar city.

On Friday, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, led by Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, held a tribal jirga in the city of Peshawar and announced that "the extremists enter Pakistan from Afghanistan”.

The jirga was held after a bloody explosion in Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which targeted a gathering of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and left 63 dead and 200 injured. ISIS Khorasan had taken responsibility for the attack.

In response to Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman's statement about how "terrorists use Afghan soil", Mohammad Khorasani, the spokesperson of TTP, said that Pakistani authorities blame others for their failures in the security sphere of Pakistan.

After the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021, attacks against Pakistani security forces have increased. The government of Pakistan has claimed that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has safe havens in Afghanistan. Both the Afghan Taliban and TTP have denied Islamabad’s claims.

Sources said that the Taliban group is worried about domestic reactions and does not want to publicise the decree.

Islamabad asked the Taliban to publicise the decree in order to prevent the attacks of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its Afghan supporters.

According to the sources, Asif Durrani, Pakistan's special representative for Afghanistan affairs, last month had met with Taliban’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and discussed the decree.

Sources said that the order of the leader of the Taliban has been communicated to the Pakistani authorities to show the group’s determination that Afghan soil is not a threat to Islamabad.

Currently, the decree of Akhundzada has been delivered to Taliban officials and individuals, including Mullah Yaqoob, the Taliban's Minister of Defence.

Mullah Yaqoob was the first to have implied the presence of a decree to ban Jihad in Pakistan.

The Taliban's defence minister announced last week that if someone goes outside of Afghanistan with the intention of jihad, his work is not called jihad.

He said, "If the Emir [leader] stops the Mujahideen from fighting and they still go to fight, this war is not called Jihad."

The Taliban-controlled Afghanistan National Television had broadcast the Taliban’s defence minister’s statement on Saturday.

According to Ghasemzadeh, these people wanted to enter Iran "illegally".

Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday that these Afghans have been identified and arrested from the borders of Sistan and Baluchistan province of Iran.

The commander of Zabul border regiment said that those who enter Iran illegally will be expelled from the country.

Ghasemzadeh added that Iran's border guards will deal with the illegal movement and residence of unauthorised foreigners in Sistan and Baluchistan province seriously.

After the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, thousands of Afghan citizens fled to neighbouring countries, including Iran.

However, the authorities of the Islamic Republic deport thousands of Afghans from Iran every week because they do not have valid residence documents.

Some Iranian officials have said that the number of Afghans living in Iran is about five million people, but others have estimated this figure to be seven million.

The statement said that the NRF fighters attacked five members of the Taliban who were crossing the area.

It has been claimed that because of the NRF fighters’ attack, one member of the Taliban had been injured, and four others were killed.

The Taliban has not reacted to NRF’s statement.

The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, led by Ahmad Massoud, is one of the military fronts which fights against the Taliban since the fall of Kabul in August 2021.

In a statement, Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) said that it stands in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan.

The statement stressed that the Shia community of Afghanistan—whose members are predominantly Hazaras—are facing systematic discrimination, targeted attacks, marginalisation, persecution, and harsh restrictions by the Taliban.

The Taliban has imposed bans on the Shias’ and Hazaras’ freedom of religion or belief. In addition, the Taliban is responsible for the forced displacements and disappearances of Shia Hazaras, their exclusion from humanitarian aid, as well as arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings of civilians across Afghanistan, it stated.

The statement stressed that the Taliban had banned the Shia Hazaras from organising, participating in, and practising Muharram ceremonies (Shia religious mourning events) across the country and even, raided the Muharram processions and opened fire on Shia mourners, killing and injuring Shia civilians.

“The situation of massive and systematic human rights violations against the Shia community is extremely alarming. Such callous and organised persecution of the Shia community is fundamentally linked to the complete denial of their freedom of religion or belief–a bleak situation that necessitates global condemnation. International solidarity with the Shia Hazaras and other ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan has never been more important and necessary,” said Mary Aileen Bacalso, FORUM-ASIA Executive Director.

It called for an immediate end to the systematic attacks against the Shia Hazaras, which bears the hallmarks of a genocide.

It urged the Taliban to immediately lift the imposed restrictions on the fundamental rights of the people of Afghanistan, in particular women and girls and marginalised communities such as Shia Hazaras, including their freedom of religion or belief; freedom of expression; and rights to access education, information, work, travel, and peaceful assembly and association.

The rights group also called for the group to preserve religious diversity and protect marginalised groups at risk, particularly women and girls; the Shia Hazaras; Sikhs; Hindus; and Sufis.

The rights body also urged international stakeholders to support the establishment by the UN Human Rights Council of an international investigative and accountability mechanism to collect, preserve, and document evidence on all human rights violations in Afghanistan.

The statement stressed that the Taliban has also abolished all legal mechanisms for upholding human rights and the rule of law in Afghanistan. They removed legal provisions and national events dedicated to Shia Hazaras, hence putting the community at further risks of persecution.

It also added that vulnerable ethnic and religious communities can be protected by providing them with feasible protection measures such as humanitarian visas and resettlement opportunities for the most persecuted groups such as the Shia Hazaras.